2. Installed 514
After installing, given the message "No charts installed..." I click "ok" and then the tools menu opens, quickly grays out and then Opencpn hangs with the message "Opencpn.exe has stopped working, A problem caused...".
This is reproducible, happens every time I try to start it, and also if I erase the content of the folder and reinstall.
Also if I just erase the content of the folder and restart to try to get Opencpn to rebuild the log and ini files.

3. I then removed the whole directory and installed 501 to recreate the log and ini files, and then restarted 514 with the same error.

4. Started v1.3.6 to recreate the files, and then exited.
Now 514 starts ok.

So, it seems that 1.3.6 write some essential stuff in the ini folder that is not made by some later betas. I have a feeling this has been discussed earlier but cant find it...

5. I open the tools menu and configures for use with cm93 and let it create the chartlist file, fast and swift.

6. After it is finished the initial display looks ugly. Se screen dump test1.jpg.
Need to zoom in a few times to get a decent view. (More of a feature, but It doesn't look "cool&nice" for a first viewer. And what happened to the world map outline in earlier versions, the one shown before any charts were configured?

7. I play around a little, looks cool. I then enter the tools menu and delete the CM93 reference and make a mistake, I browse to the wrong directory, a directory containing a pdf file. When I check the "Force full rebuild" and click ok the app hangs again with the same error message as before.

I think this uncool, the app should give an error message saying, no charts found in directory structure or something similar. Not hang.

8. I then choose a directory with bsb's, works fine now. Even the world outline is back!

Regarding the Transmerc and quilting discussion.
I don't think quilting really is essential, but what really is essential is a warning that quilting should not be used with them.
Also some way to automatically drop out of quilting mode if there are Tmercs, otherwise the navigator might miss there are more detailed charts installed that are not included in the quilt because they are Tmercs...

Agreed, there is something about that one I'm not too fond of either. It looks like a danger/warning sign or something. What do you think of this guy:

Sniper Sites

To me it looks like a danger/warning sign too. So why use the color red for it? Isn't red just the usual color for alerts and warnings?
And secondly I never saw a round display.
I mean there is also a certain risk to mix it up with the display of radar rings.

I did a couple of screen captures to show you the type of thing I was up to and why its good to have quick and easy access to Opencpn.

I was coming upwind between an island and the mainland with wind direction moves from land effect and veering.

To make the headland I need to work hard at the sailing. I need to be on deck running below to quickly check the chart.

Close hauled in 20 knots we are on our ear and the computer is on a slope of about 20 - 25 degrees - A mouse loves it!

To navigate this headland I need to project my course with different senarios... to put on diferent measured baring lines and have them stay on the screen - a new route line isnt the same and doesnt have the information on screen that I want.

Then there is the annoyances of the whole screen turning pink when I am rushing down from the wheel to see if we are about to wrap ourselves around the headland.

Other annoyances:

1) No measure facitlity that leaves a line on the chart
2) Notice the track has stopped where it changed colour? It needs to stay on. (it would be great to have log points to click on too showing time/speed/course)
3) The big yellow line is just a waste of screen space.
4) Screen turning pink on yellow line mouse over

By the way, is there an anchoralarm?
I wouldn't mind that A nice loud one!

I would like to write notes on the screen and put arrows for wind and that sort of stuff too

To me it looks like a danger/warning sign too. So why use the color red for it? Isn't red just the usual color for alerts and warnings?
And secondly I never saw a round display.
I mean there is also a certain risk to mix it up with the display of radar rings.

Dave, two minor annoyance bugs that you may want to address at some point:

1) To backup and add to Gilletarom's post above, I see that behavior on both Win 7 and XP. Also on XP, if you lay a window over the top (e.g. task manager) and move or resize, you get residual images of the overlayed window in the area left/right of the satellite/course-up icon area.

2) If you move or rename the folder containing your charts from Windows explorer (which are entered in charts list) without OpenCPN running, OpenCPN crashes when you try to start it. You have to either manually edit the .ini file or move the folder back.

I took build 514 for a spin out in the ocean today. It ran very smoothly for about 5 hours straight with tracking and AIS turned on using ENC charts and quilting with no problems. Nicely done!

3. Ptizef Crash Post 443: Cannot reproduce yet. Added protection code anyway....Have you seen it again? I did reproduce it if I clicked on a chart bar while the database rebuild was actually in process. I fixed this....

Yes I can now reproduce it each time :
open 136 , the chart base is rebuilt .. then exit
open 210-514 then rebuild chart base (either forcing or not ) . During rebuild , move the cursor and only pass over the chart control bars (without clicking) = crash
Once a built has been successful , the problem disappear
The problem exists both in quilt and no quilt mode but I get different stop points in debug mode (see screen shots attached)
2)

Quote:

Here is a question for Windows users:Is the toolbox display slow to appear?

I didn't notice any problem both on Vista and on my small notebook under XP

Hello again,
Can someone explain, why using the HotKey for new waypoint, the new mark is not exactly where the boat is, but where the mouse are?
Would not it be more logical, the waypoint to stay in place the exact trail route?

The problem of the delay with the Toolbox is not with Windows, but with Ubuntu 10.04.

.......

I'm not sure this is a OpenCPN problem. I'm on a seven year old Athlon box, and when upgrading from Ubuntu 9.10 to 10.4, I answered "yes" to a few to many question, before thinking ...... and lost a some of my old customizations.
My computer was sooo slow with standard settings using Kubuntu, and yes ...it took a long time to open the toolbox. Now I'm down to a second or less...
I got my "hdparm", "swapiness" and "fstab" set to values to speed up things, also, I stopped all services that I did not need or used from starting. I also changed to Xubuntu(Xfce), as K-desktop, like most similar "fully featured" desktops, tended to get to bloated for my old hardware. The overall result of this, is that I now have a decently fast(to me) box.

Search google for ways to speed up Linux/Ubuntu and you will find heaps of advice. Of course I don't know what kind of hardware you are on ......... !!

Proximal cause: cm93 "A" scale only is available at this geo point. VPScale=10...units are pixels per meter...huge overzoom of "A" scale...leading to a really huge region...which gtk does not like, probably causing a stack overflow.

Root cause of random hit: I dunno. I suspect on some chart switches, the new scale value is sometimes not set to a reasonable value.

Anyway, I'll code around the huge region potential, which should speed things up as a side benefit. I'll also try to constrain the maximum conventional scale based upon the native scale of the cm93 cell. For instance, "A" scale cm93 should never need to be shown at inverse pixel scale of greater than say .01 pixels per meter (or equivalently, 100 meters per pixel).

Sure, I am the kind of guy who push on the button too quickly but for this time, I am sure that is not the reason. Because the Toolbox is opening normaly since midday, less than one second as previously with Karmic. I have not done any update of the system, the only thing I have done, by chance, is to unplug my 3.5 G modem. Most of the time, I have the modemplug and if I unplugged it, Toolbox is opening fast ! Crazy ! I don't understand anything about that, but I have made a lot of tries, it is working and I have not change anything else !
Both were working fine under Karmic. And I need both of them !

The bad point is that GPSD is not working anymore. It has been for 2 or 3 days after you gave me the old version, but actually, it is impossible to have it working. So no GPS ! And the same, I don't change anything .
I try the little soft of Manimaul, nmeamon. When GPSD was working I could see the data, but no more. And the same GPS is working fine with an other soft under Windows with Virtualbox.

The bad point is that GPSD is not working anymore. It has been for 2 or 3 days after you gave me the old version, but actually, it is impossible to have it working. So no GPS ! And the same, I don't change anything .

That's due to the gpsd version change. This is rather annoying. Perhaps we could make the older gpsd a dependency of opencpn in the .deb release?